


the guiding flame of r'hllor

by mosaical



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Vague Storytelling, au s7, cersei finds herself with a weird priestess girlfriend, some sort of symbolism?, that's about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-03-17 07:35:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18960754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mosaical/pseuds/mosaical
Summary: Melisandre was gentle when she touched her middle, with all of the knowing in the world, as though she could sense the child growing inside of her even though she could barely see the starting swell of her stomach. Her warmth emanated through the fabric of Cersei's gown. It was almost hot, and when Cersei blinked she saw a flare in the darkness behind her eyelids, like a flame flickering in the far distance.Your daughter will be beautiful,the priestess said,and strong, and long-lived.





	the guiding flame of r'hllor

**Author's Note:**

> "I would like to have dinner [as Melisandre] with Cersei. It would be very interesting what would happen then, I think."
> 
> —Carice Van Houten

The first time Cersei laid eyes upon Melisandre, she was gliding into the Great Hall a fortnight after Jaime had left, flanked by soldiers who jostled her when they shoved her forward. She had not wavered even then, but rather looked up at her, smiling, a beauty despite the bruise on her jaw that suggested the men leading her inside had been rough with her some time before. Cersei had never seen her for herself, but she had heard the stories – she was just as red as described, with the color in her gown and in her cloak, in her hair and in the glistening jewel around her throat.

The first thing she did then was request a private audience, to explain herself and her arrival in King's Landing, and the first thing Cersei did then was to laugh, long and spiteful and incredulous.

Not five minutes had gone between them and the fire of the torches before she agreed.

At the end of a long walk through to the map room, they stood there over Highgarden, with only Ser Gregor standing aside to guard her should the woman try something. Melisandre wasted no time in moving forward, her fingers outstretched, and when Qyburn's great creation stepped between them with no sound but the heavy clattering of his dark armor, she stopped and stilled.

A wash of pleasure ran over Cersei then, knowing that not even this woman was immune to the terror that was Ser Gregor in all of his glory, and that now she would know that she had no right to do anything like act as though they were equals, as though she could try to touch Cersei, as though she could try anything at all.

Now Cersei knew that this woman was only another woman, and nothing more.

But then the priestess had smiled, truly and sincerely, and looked past his towering form to Cersei. “May I?” she asked, and her gaze didn't waver, and her hand – still held out in the space between them – didn't shake.

Cersei looked at her, and looked at her again, seeing no fear in those bright eyes, not even the slightest hint of quivering unease in the curve of her pale mouth, and told Ser Gregor to step aside.

Melisandre was gentle when she touched her middle, with all of the knowing in the world, as though she could sense the child growing inside of her even though she could barely see the starting swell of her stomach. Her warmth emanated through the fabric of Cersei's gown. It was almost hot, and when Cersei blinked she saw a flare in the darkness behind her eyelids, like a flame flickering in the far distance.

 _Your daughter will be beautiful,_  the priestess said, _and strong, and long-lived._

 

  


 

She gave Melisandre a room across the Keep, as far away from her own chambers as possible.

She knocked three nights later on Cersei's door despite how she was clearly unwelcome, and stepped in without asking when Cersei—who barely slept at all anymore—opened it. They drank wine, and then Cersei pulled her into bed at the end of the evening and kissed the taste away. When she seized and twitched and reached her end against Melisandre's twisting, curling fingers, she called her brother's name even though he was nothing like the priestess and the priestess was nothing like him; only the feeling was similar, the feeling of being delighted and consumed and swallowed and pleased without flaw and even left whole in the end, rather than aching and annoyed and feeling like something was missing.

“You know,” she said, after, when Melisandre didn't so much as stare at her, and didn't feel as surprised as she knew she should.

“I know,” Melisandre said, and smiled. “If I know the origin of the child that is growing within you, surely I also know the origin of her parents. Both parents.”

Cersei breathed out. “And?”

“And what, my queen?” Melisandre tilted her head, and pressed her fingers over Cersei's belly. “It was meant to be.”

For that, she let her stay the night in her bed as a one-time courtesy.

She only ended up letting her stay the next, and the next, and the next.

 

  


 

Cersei reached for the choker, once, intending to take it off because something inside of her could not stop wanting to look at it; their third time fucking one another, where the first time had been languid and doused in wine and Cersei had paid very little attention, and the second time had been rushed and neither of them undressed.

Her wrist was caught sharply in ivory fingers before they could land at Melisandre's throat, tight like a trap, and then her fingers were guided down to the red curls between the priestess' thighs.

“It is the Lord of Light's gift to me,” Melisandre said, “and I will never take it off.”

Their eyes met, and in her gaze Cersei saw certainty, and sincerity, and a quiet steel that she found she admired a little instead of loathed, if only because it was the quiet kind, if only because it was small and meaningless and she didn't care about the reason, not really.

Cersei pushed her fingers inside, and didn't reach for Melisandre's throat again, instead deciding to accept it as only another of her unpleasantly strange, foreign traits, like the way she insisted on leaving several candles lit throughout the night and into the morning.

She mocked the woman more than once for her fear of the dark; all Melisandre ever did in return was smile vaguely and say that she should fear it as well, and if Cersei blew out the candles, the priestess would get up and light each one over again, and again, and again – so Cersei learned to do what she wasn't used to doing, and gave up.

 

  


 

“Look into the fires, my queen,” Melisandre said, as she did each and every night before bed. She guided Cersei to the brazier and made her look, a warm hand settled on her aching back. “What do you see?”

Cersei sighed, each and every time. “I see fire, you stupid whore,” she said, and it wasn't yet the cruelest thing she'd ever called her.

Melisandre never seemed disappointed by that answer.

Cersei almost was.

 

  


 

“You've made a habit of this,” Cersei told her in bed.

Melisandre looked at her curiously. Her skin glistened with sweat and her hair was tangled and she looked the same: calm, pristine, in control. Cersei wanted to take it all away. “Your Grace?”

Cersei reached down and twisted a nipple viciously, to see the reaction; it was ultimately disappointing. Melisandre shivered, arched her back and made a small, kittenish noise in the back of her throat, but her eyes stayed on Cersei's, her thighs stayed neatly splayed, she didn't push her or her roaming fingers away.

“Slithering your way into our beds like a viper,” she said. “You were Stannis Baratheon's, and now you are mine. Who will be next on your little list of lords and kings and queens to fuck?”

Melisandre blinked once, long and slow, at his name. Cersei wanted more, but it was enough. For now.

“The Lord of Light shows me only your face in the flames now, my Queen.”

“Good,” Cersei said, and kissed her until she bled.

 

  


 

“Do you feel it?” Melisandre asked, a whisper in her ear, her long red hair brushing Cersei's face when she leaned over.

Fingers spread open and wide against the soft, lower part of her stomach, and Cersei's eyes darted to the ceiling, uneasy with the heat coming from the palm pressed to her skin.

Melisandre smiled gently above her, and Cersei's breath hitched, only a little and only from the warmth.

“Do you feel it?” Melisandre said again and rubbed her fingers over the smooth, rounded swell of Cersei's belly, and Cersei did feel something, something alive and pulsing and hot inside of her, like a thousand fires burning all at once and raging to escape, pressing against her insides in feverish rushes.

“Shut up,” she said instead of agreeing, instead of telling the truth. Melisandre opened her mouth to say more nonsense, and Cersei covered it with her own, and they didn't speak anymore that evening.

 

  


 

“R'hllor, you are the light in our eyes..”

Cersei rolled her eyes.

“...the fire in our hearts...”

Cersei sighed.

“...the heat in our loins...”

That was her least favorite line of the prayer Melisandre chanted each morning and each night after the sun set over King's Landing, and like all the many times before, it made her scoff. She leaned up on an elbow, watching Melisandre's head dip over the glinting fire in the brazier, so low that she thought – half-hoped – that the woman's hair might catch fire and she would stumble back, head aflame, screaming...

Alas, it was not meant to be.

“Yours is the sun that warms our days, yours the stars that guard us in the dark of night...”

The brazier was, Cersei decided, an ugly thing. Too tall and too large, too wide around, something that stood out in her bedchamber – but she had allowed Melisandre to bring it in regardless, at the end of the first month when the realization that it was a small price to pay for Melisandre to stay near. Otherwise the priestess would disappear in the night and in the morning, performing her prayers elsewhere.

No, Cersei preferred this. This way, she could listen in. There was something soothing, reassuring about the knowledge that Melisandre would not be straying from her, even if the results were never as informative or clear as she would like.

“R'hllor who gave us breath, we thank you. R'hllor who gave us day, we thank you.”

Cersei gazed at the ceiling, and then at Melisandre's back. She had not dressed upon leaving the bed, and so she was tall and pale and bare, her spine a perfect, straight thing, her hands clasped, the jewel at her throat glimmering in that way it often did.

The red woman had few physical flaws, practically none at all, and Cersei had never seen her moonblood. She liked sweet things in moderation, along with rich spices, and trailing her fingers over the blankets around them them when she spoke poetically of her Lord and her visions. She didn't speak about Stannis, about Selyse, about little Shireen, though Cersei had tried more than once to pull that conversation from her, and the closest she had ever come was Melisandre turning to look at her, something in her eyes forlorn. It was eerie, worse than the anger or loathing she wanted. It was regret, and remorse, so deep-rooted that she could see it in every inch of the priestess' body. She did not speak of the Baratheons. She spoke of Daenerys Targaryen, and the Lannisters, her brothers, the ones that had betrayed Cersei too many times to count, and memories that Cersei had long forgotten until she spoke of them at random, and casually, like it should be no surprise that she knew of those things.

Mainly, she spoke of horrors that laid beyond the Wall. She spoke of them even when Cersei rolled her eyes and laughed and mocked her, and all that said to Cersei was that she was regularly fucking a madwoman.

She knew she should have been more bothered than she was by the idea of that, but she wasn't.

Melisandre knew everything about her, and Cersei knew very little about Melisandre in turn.

That irritated her, but as time passed, it irritated her less.

“For the night is dark and full of terrors...”

Cersei sighed again, and echoed the next part with Melisandre. “But the fire burns them all away.”

Melisandre turned to her, an eyebrow raised as though she was surprised—but then she smiled, and offered Cersei a hand. “Come,” she instructed gently, “look into the fires with me. They are quiet tonight, but it will not last.”

Cersei eyed her pointedly, feeling her irritation growing towards anger, until Melisandre softened with realization and dipped her head apologetically. When she turned away from the brazier it was for good, and when she returned to the bed, she did so without another word.

It was the way Cersei liked, and when Melisandre held her close and kissed her throat, her mouth leaving a burning trail on her skin, she looked over the woman's shoulder and into the flames.

They were quiet, but they weren't silent, and Cersei kept her eyes open and on the brazier even when Melisandre bit down on her skin and slid a hand between her legs.

That night, Cersei dreamed of a blaze that burned everything in its path, leaving the earth beneath its trail scorched black forever. She dreamed of cities crumbling, and the sky turning to hues of orange and red with the smoke that hung heavy in the air after. She dreamed of ice melting, and walls falling, and monsters dying, and the fire burning on forever, until Westeros tipped over into the black, and all the world followed with it.

When she woke, she stared at the ceiling until Melisandre stirred, curling close like a cat hungry for more than the warmth of itself. Her arm draped across Cersei. Purposefully, she knew, when she looked down and saw that the woman's eyes were open. It wasn't very surprising. She did all things purposefully, Cersei thought. There was no Melisandre without constant reason, constant purpose, constant desire and guidance.

Cersei thought of Jaime and Tyrion and the Targaryen girl and her dragons, and she thought of all the people who wanted to see her dead, thought of all the ones who wanted her crown taken from her head and her head separated thereafter from her shoulders. She thought of fire and ice and an end to it all.

Beneath Melisandre's idle, roaming fingers, her daughter shifted gently for the first time, and they looked at each other.

“Do you feel it?” Melisandre asked.

“Yes,” Cersei said, only a little breathless from the feeling. She wondered what she was saying _yes_ to, and then realized it didn't matter; the answer would be the same regardless.

Melisandre smiled.

Cersei, slowly, felt herself smile back.


End file.
